Its incredibly ironic that I almost didnt bother to read this article, only because Salon had to slap on the now-obligatory, inflammatory headline, having little to do with the authors overall point. Its more ironic, considering the author discusses that very practice. I think this is an excellent, well-reasoned commentary on our political system and its relationship with media and culture. If every American read this, we might even be able to have a reasonable discussion about it. (Its excerpted from what seems to be a very interesting book). This recklessness may be due to the belief that democracy is nothing more than the expression of the individual liberty of citizens and therefore needs no special “ethic” in order to survive. But that is clearly not the case. Democracy involves a finely balanced set of institutions that evolved over the course of hundreds of years. Maintaining this balance requires an enormous amount of self-restraint on the part of everyone involved. It is not at all obvious that it can survive in a system of no-holds-barred electoral competition.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 20:26:13 +0000